Spring 2017 CREATE page 4 - College of LSA...1898 The existence of organic free radicals is discovered by Chemistry Professor Moses Gomberg. 1954 Professor Donald Glaser invents his

Spring 2017

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1817The University of Michigan

is founded. Originally called the Catholepistemiad, or

University of Michigania, its first building was on Bates

Street in Detroit.

1837The Michigan Legislature passes an act creating the University

of Michigan and its three departments: Law, Medicine, and “the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts.”

1841Professor of Mathematics

George Palmer Williams gives the first lecture in U-M history to

seven students in Mason Hall.

1915The Committee on Nomenclature proposes and the Regents approve “College of Literature, Science, and the Arts” as the official name of LSA.

1929A summer symposium on nuclear

physics is held on campus, the first of 12 that would attract top physicists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and

Enrico Fermi.

1955Actor James Earl Jones graduates

from U-M with a degree in English literature.

1967The Residential College is established.

1968The Black Student Union takes possession of the LSA Building as part

of a protest demanding increased minority enrollment and support services for minority students.

1975Hopwood Award winner and faculty member Robert Hayden becomes the first African American to serve

as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position known today

as U.S. Poet Laureate.

1870Madelon Louisa Stockwell is the first woman admitted to the University.

Saiske Tagai, U-M’s first Asian student, is admitted in 1872. Mary Henrietta Graham, the first known African American woman student,

is admitted in 1876.

1875Henry S. Frieze is appointed the first dean of LSA.

1930The Hopwood Awards for creative

writing, playwriting, and poetry are given out for the first time.

1841Professor of Mathematics

George Palmer Williams gives the first lecture in U-M history to

seven students in Mason Hall.

1929Literature graduate Esther

Marsh Cram (A.B. 1898) becomes the first woman

regent of the University.

1943Future Nobel laureate

Jerome Karle earns his Ph.D. in chemistry.

2000The National Medal of Science goes to alumna and mathematician Karen K. Uhlenbeck (A.B. 1964).

1975Hopwood Award winner and faculty member Robert Hayden becomes the first African American to serve

as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position known today

as U.S. Poet Laureate.2010

LSA junior Chris Armstrong (A.B. ’11) becomes the first openly gay president

of U-M’s student government.

1947Valentine Davies (A.B. 1936) wins the Academy Award for Best Story for

the film Miracle on 34th Street.

1880The Department of Economics is established, although classes in

economics had been taught since the University’s founding.

1898The existence of organic free radicals is discovered by Chemistry Professor Moses Gomberg.

1954Professor Donald Glaser invents his “bubble chamber,” a way to observe subatomic particles. He would later win the Nobel Prize in Physics for

the invention.

1948Orval “Val” Johnson

(A.B. 1949) becomes the first African American

president of the LSA senior class.

2013Robert “Bob” Shiller

(A.B. 1967) wins the Nobel Prize in

Economics.

2017The University of Michigan celebrates

its 200th birthday with a year of bicentennial-themed events, symposia,

special guests, and more.

TAKE A DEEPER DIVE INTO THE COLLEGE’S HISTORY ONLINE AT myumi.ch/lsatimeline.

8Student UnionStudents striking for change and building a path for those who come after.by Susan Hutton

PHOTO Bentley Historical Library

20Object LessonsTwo centuries, a score of museums, and millions of artifacts and specimens. Welcome to the archives.by Elizabeth Wason

PHOTO Eric Bronson/Michigan Photography

SPRING 2017 / LSA Magazine 1

34Speak for YourselfUsing free speech to fight tyranny.by Brian Short

PHOTO Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

44Computer IconsThe computer revolution then and now.by Rachel Reed

ILLUSTRATION Erin Nelson


In March, President James Madison vetoes the controversial Bonus Bill, legislation he agrees with but deems unconstitutional, sparking conflict between the White House and Congress. Wars rage in Serbia, Russia, Burma, and Florida. A massive cholera epidemic begins near Calcutta, and outbreaks of typhus strike cities in Scotland.

It is a time of grief, strife, and tragedy, but also a time of powerful discoveries and tremendous potential. The English surgeon James Parkinson publishes An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, describing what will become known as Parkinson’s disease. In Massachusetts, the abolitionist Paul Cuffee dies and is buried in the graveyard of the Westport Friends Meetinghouse. In London, John Keats is introduced to William Wordsworth at a dinner party.

And in Detroit, near the end of a hot summer, Chief Justice Augustus Woodward drafts a document founding an institution that will encompass all of human knowledge, a learning machine that will change the world.

1817.

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A Purpose Made Permanent

by James Tobin

Connecting ourselves across two centuries back to Henry Tappan, the transformational first President of U-M, means connecting to a higher purpose.FOLLOW ME FOR A MINUTE. I WANT TO LEAD YOU THROUGH AN IMAGINARY human web that stretches across more than a century and a half.

At the far distant end, in the 1850s, the first strand in the web is tied to Michigan’s first president, Henry Philip Tappan.

Here in the present, there’s a tiny strand tied to my little finger.This isn’t a web of causation, just of connection — one person connected

to another, then another, and so on, from Tappan to me.



WORLD AFFAIRSCommodore Matthew Perry arrives in Japan in 1853 with almost 1,000 American seamen, pressuring the Japanese government to open its ports to foreign ships and ending a long period of national isolation.

THE WORLD OFHENRY TAPPANPRESIDENT

1852–1863LITERATUREThe first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published in 1855 and includes 12 poems.

One of White’s students was Charles Kendall Adams.Adams graduated in 1861 and joined White as an instructor in his-

tory. After White went back to his native state of New York (where he would become the founding president of Cornell), Adams was appointed to fill White’s vacant professorship.

Adams was one of the first American historians to use the sem-inar method of teaching. In a history seminar, students study and write about original historical documents, just as working histo-rians do. Adams’s colleagues picked up the seminar method and soon it became standard, not only at Michigan but in many other history departments, as well.

In the late 1800s, the most important historian trained by the seminar method was arguably Frederick Jackson Turner, author of the “frontier thesis” of American history. He earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins and then taught at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard.

At Wisconsin, Turner had a deep influence on a young col-league, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who later joined the Department of History at Michigan, where he rewrote the history of slavery and the Old South.

One of Phillips’s star students was Dwight Lowell Dumond, who joined the history department in 1930. He wrote important books on the antislavery movement.

One of Dumond’s star students was Sidney Fine, who joined the department in 1948 and later was named the Andrew Dickson White Professor of History. He taught until 2001. His 53 years on the fac-ulty are reckoned to be the longest tenure of any Michigan professor.

Of the roughly 29,000 students taught by Sidney Fine, my wife was one and I was another.

I was not one of Fine’s star students.But I learned how to study original historical documents in his

graduate seminar — a seminar of the kind introduced at U-M by Charles Kendall Adams, student of Andrew Dickson White, hired by Henry Philip Tappan.That gave me the tools to write three biographies and a lot of

historical articles. So I feel a long-distance connection to Henry Tappan tugging at me through seven degrees of separation, and I feel grateful for it.

Any LSA alumnus can play this game. A biology major can string a line to Tappan through the great U-M bacteriologist Frederick Novy (1864–1957). A teacher’s connection runs through John Dewey

o, here goes:Henry Tappan became U-M’s

first president in 1852.In 1858, Tappan hired a young

historian named Andrew Dickson White. White became the first professor to teach modern history in U-M’s original Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

+ +


SCIENCEHaving delayed promoting his theory of natural selec-tion for 20 years, Charles Darwin finally publishes On the Origin of Species in 1859.

MUSIC“John Brown’s Body,” then known as “John Brown Song,” is performed for the first time on Sunday, May 12, 1861, outside of Boston. Fort Sumter had been taken a month earlier, marking the beginning of the American Civil War.

(1859–1952), the philosopher and theorist of education. An infor-mation specialist’s line goes through Margaret Mann (1873–1960), who helped start the unit that would become the School of Infor-mation. Graduates of the Honors Program have a very short route to Tappan. The program’s first director was Robert Cooley Angell (1899–1994), grandson of Thomas McIntyre Cooley, whom Tappan hired as a law professor.This becomes more than a parlor game when you think about

why these strands exist at all. They form a vast, complex web that is the University of Michigan as an institution — that is, a network of people reaching through time and space and united by a com-mon purpose: To learn.

I remember Sidney Fine saying to me once that one of his purposes as a teacher was “to instill in my students a respect for my profession.”

At the time that struck me as self-serving. Shouldn’t he teach just for the good of his students?

I realize now he was thinking of how his work served institu-tions along with students — the institution of history as a profes-sion and the larger institutions that supported that profession, the University, and higher education as a whole. Fine’s work as a teacher depended entirely on their health. And the teaching of history would outlive him only if those institutions were strong.

By the light of popular culture, American institutions look pow-erful, even too powerful. Since the 1960s, at least, the institution has generally been seen as the enemy of individualism, and no doubt that’s often true enough.

But in another light, the web of an institution can look delicate, even fragile.

President Tappan had something like this in mind when he said universities were like families. They were “maintained, not by legal enactments, but by the influences of predominant char-acter, by the force of example . . . by the diffused spirit of the social life itself — the esprit de corps of the family or society and by prin-ciples breathed around from the intimate relations, the mutual dependencies, and common aims and pursuits . . . . Where eminent professors breathe around the spirit of knowledge and liberal culture, and give the exam-ple of a noble devotion to learning, they must . . . create a prevailing sentiment

which . . . will prove more commanding than all written statutes, and without which written statutes are a dead letter.”The University wasn’t standing on the strength of regents’

bylaws, and certainly not by mere bricks and mortar. It was held up by nothing more substantial than the breath of professors and students talking.

In 1882, a part-time instructor named Henry Carter Adams wrote to President James Burrill Angell — so many faculty names were triple-barreled in those days — to ask for a permanent posi-tion. Adams, who would become one of U-M’s great economists, wanted a job in Ann Arbor, he told Angell, because “you have the men to talk to.”

Adams said “men,” of course. It would be a long time before there were many on the faculty besides white males to talk to. But the idea is the same now as it was in 1882. The value in the institu-tion lies in the quality of the talk and the questions asked — and so, by extension, in the freedom to talk and the eagerness to listen.

It’s worth reflecting that this delicate web needs tender care in its bicentennial year as much as in Henry Tappan’s time.

It’s one thing, as an individual, to love learning — to be aware, curious, and questing.

It’s quite another to support an institution whose whole purpose is to nurture and fulfill that love.The institution is the purpose made permanent. It’s a means of

defying our own mortality. It connects you and me to Henry Tap-pan, who said in his inaugural address, just before Christmas 1852: “We cannot entail estates in our country to our legal heirs. But an estate might be entailed in a great University as long as our country shall exist — a splendid beneficence — a monument worthy of the ambition of any man.” n

+ +


More than 40 years ago, a group of students demanded U-M make black student enrollment and academic success a higher priority. After the administration stepped up its efforts to recruit and admit students from underserved communities, the students created a program to help them succeed once they got here.

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10 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017 PHOTOS (Previous page and above) Jay Cassidy/Bentley Historical Library

The lack of diversity at U-M at the time did not go unnoticed. In 1962, after a federal investigation found evidence of a substan-tial racial bias, the University was urged to improve integration throughout its programs. In response, President Harlan Hatcher created and charged a committee to find ways to accomplish this goal, and the committee proposed the Opportunity Award Pro-gram (OAP), which launched in 1964.

OAP aimed to increase diversity at U-M by actively recruiting and admitting underrepresented students, offering financial aid, and providing support services such as advising and tutoring. In its first year, OAP admitted 70 students. By 1969, the number had climbed to 229.The executive director of the Center for Educational Outreach

at U-M, William (Nick) Collins (A.B. 1970, M.A. ’72, Ph.D. ’75), was one of 86 students OAP admitted in its third year. Collins’s was the first generation with access to TV, so, as a sophomore in high school, he’d watched the backlash to integration efforts in the South from his living room. Before he graduated from high school, both Malcolm X and JFK had been assassinated, and President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Collins and his cohort arrived on campus in 1966.

“There were very few black students on campus,” Collins recalls. “We pretty much stuck together because there weren’t many of us. I would guess there might have been around 300 black students on the entire campus.”

In the fall of 1967, Arthur Thurnau Professor of Psychology J. Frank Yates (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. ’71) came to U-M as a graduate student in the Department of Psychology. That summer, there had been race riots in cities across the country, including Detroit. In addition to his classes and research, Yates wanted to get involved. He joined the Black Student Union (BSU), which was one of the black student organiza-tions active on campus.

Black studies programs were becoming popular on college campuses, and the BSU wanted to bring one to U-M.

“As is common with organizations — especially student organizations — and particularly in that era where there was a lot of talk, you just don’t have a lot of time to waste,” Yates explains. “Out of desperation I took on the responsibility of writing a draft of a proposal. And once we had a document, we decided we might as well use it. In the language of the day I suppose we probably said, ‘We demand a black studies program.’ And, surprisingly, LSA said OK.”

Other campus proposals that focused on black student admissions, enrollment, and financial aid were not embraced as readily. Between 1964 and 1969, black student enrollment had climbed from 2 percent to 3.4 percent of the total student body. The BSU argued the target should be 10 percent, which was proportional to the state of Michigan.

“The University’s answers to our proposals were always no,” Yates said. “Their argument in almost every case was, ‘We can’t afford it.’ Things hit a wall at the end of 1969, and we decided we should march and protest.”

I C O N I C I M A G E S O F S T U D E N T A C T I V I S Mon U-M’s campus from the 1960s include photos of JFK outlining what would become the Peace Corps to more than 10,000 students on the steps of the Michigan Union, impassioned protests against the Vietnam War, and a rally on Hatcher Library’s steps the morning after the nation’s first teach-in, which had been held in Angell Hall. Even a casual glance through these images makes one thing clear—the students at U-M, including the activists, were overwhelmingly white.

“Things hit a wall at the end of

1969, and we decided we should

march and protest.”

(PREVIOUS PAGE) On March 20, 1970, approximately 200 protesters marched outside of Hill Auditorium during the U-M Honors Convocation.



“Things hit a wall at the end of

1969, and we decided we should

march and protest.”

BAM urged faculty and students to boycott class-es in support of their de-mands. “Open it up or shut it down” was a common rallying cry.



“ Y O U ’ R E A D M I T T E D — G O O D L U C K ”In January 1970, U-M’s black student organizations combined forces and became the Black Action Movement (BAM), a coali-tion of black students from the Medical School, the Department of Psychology, the BSU, the Association of Black Social Work Students, and — importantly — the Black Law Students Asso-ciation. The groups combined their proposals into a single set of demands, including two proposals Yates had written: one for a black studies center on campus and the other for services to improve black student academic success. The black studies center became the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and then evolved into DAAS, today’s Department of Afroameri-can and African Studies.There was a need for these services, says Cynthia Stephens

(A.B. 1971), a judge on the Michigan First District Court of Appeals who was the vice president of the BSU in 1970. Students were arriving on campus from under-resourced schools, she explains, and many were also first-generation college students. The students OAP was enrolling were more diverse, but the OAP lacked the resources to offer real assistance once they arrived. “It was like, ‘You’re admitted,’” Stephens recalls. “‘Good luck.’” BAM also wanted to make sure those students could succeed.


During the strike, more than 300 professors canceled classes to show their support. Some de-partments completely closed down.

SPRING 2017 / LSA Magazine 13PHOTOS (Left) Andrew Sacks; (right) Bentley Historical Library

14 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017 PHOTO Bentley Historical Library14 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017

In February, BAM sent rep-resentatives to the regents meeting and presented their demands in person. The regents requested President Robben Fleming develop a counter-proposal, and the students, enraged by the regents’ deferral, left. Some went to the Shapiro Library and removed books from the shelves in protest.

BAM’s law students were essential to the effort. In 2010, Ida Short (A.B. 1971) recalled, “The [BAM] legal team would meet with us and tell us what we could do and what we could not do. One of our strategies was to go to the undergraduate library and take every single book off the shelves. And [the law students] told us, ‘Remem-ber, the books cannot be on the floor. If they’re on the floor, you could go to jail.’”The students were committed

to protesting for their cause, but they were not without apprehension. They worried about what would happen to them if they skipped class or blocked entrance to a building. Collins remembers one woman whose father warned her, “You’d better go to class. I am paying the tuition and you are about to graduate. There had better not be anything that hap-pens at this point.”The students were not just

worried about themselves, Collins says. “We felt we were representing ourselves and our communities. It was import-ant we achieve some measure of success. You didn’t want to come here and not succeed. You didn’t want to come here and get kicked out because you were protesting, for example. That was an extra weight I think many of us carried at that time.”


While the regents met

inside the administration

building on March 19,

1970, student protesters

marched through Regents Plaza.

The Kindness of StrangersEvery student in LSA’s Appreciate + Recip-rocate program has received a scholarship. Now those students are giving back.The notion that someone you’ve never even met has given you a large amount of money takes a little while to get used to. For one group of U-M students, receiv-ing such a gift from a stranger motivated them to pay it forward.

Originally founded as the Society of LSA Scholars in 2010, the group began volun-teering and working to build community among scholarship students. Renamed Appreciate + Reciprocate (A+R) in 2011, the group began raising money for LSA’s Emergency Scholarship Fund. In spring 2013, they decided to do something big-ger: endow a scholarship themselves.

“We started fundraising to create our own scholarship,” explains Avery Gleason (A.B. ’15), “because we wanted to make a bigger impact.”

The scholarship would be awarded based on need, academics, and community service. To endow a scholarship, they would need to raise $25,000, a daunting figure for a group that had previously raised only a few thousand dollars. And they needed to raise it in just two years.

COMMON WEALTHUntil this point, A+R had raised money through bake sales, bucketing on street corners, and hosting an annual benefit dinner. To get to $25,000, they would have to get creative.

“There was a lot of pressure,” recalls LSA junior Louisa Abbott, President of A+R.

When the annual Giving Blueday for 2015 rolled around, A+R launched a major campaign. They queued up hourly posts that included stories of scholar-ship students, and they encouraged donors to give at midnight to maximize their chances of having their donations matched. They also competed in stu-dent-group challenges, and reached out to family and friends for support.

“Dean Martin even tweeted he had made a donation to us on Giving Blueday, which was really encouraging,” says Anna Thompson (A.B. ’16). “I think the com-bination of preparation, personal outreach, and strong social media presence allowed us to be successful.” A+R ended up raising $8,450.

By the spring 2016 A+R benefit dinner, members of the group were nervous but optimistic about their chances of reaching their goal. At the end of the evening, they had raised $30,000, well past what they needed to endow the scholarship. “The dinner was a fundraiser and a celebration at the same time,” past A+R Presi-dent Samantha Lemmen (A.B. ’16) says.

The very first A+R scholarship has been awarded to an LSA junior, and the fund will now generate an annual $1,000 award to give to one junior or senior. The group is now raising money to sponsor two students.

“I got to come to U-M because someone had invested in me,” Lemmen says. “Being able to take away some of the financial stress so a student can fully focus on being here was especially meaningful ”

“My scholarship made U-M a reality for me,” says Thompson, who chaired the scholarship fundraising effort. “A+R was the perfect way to give back for what I’d been given.”

2010–PRESENT


Negotiations continued without progress. Outside of the March regents meeting, BAM declared black students were going on strike. They vowed to close down the University until their demands were met. By then, BAM had got-ten more strategic, asking mem-bers of the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees not to cross their picket line and appealing to white student activists to join them. There still weren’t enough black students on campus to close the place down by themselves.The strike began Friday, March

20. By Wednesday, attendance in LSA classes had dropped by 60 per-cent. By Thursday, it was down 75 percent, and the College considered shutting down. On Friday, BAM and President Fleming met to negotiate BAM’s demands. On April 1, they reached a settlement.


E X C E L L E N C E , N O T S U F F I C I E N C YThe University agreed to Yates’s proposals for a black studies center on campus, and for a program to improve academic success known as the Coalition for the Use of Learning Skills (CULS). CULS was to launch that September — only four months away.


Sisterhood Is Powerful

The group brought a proposal to LSA Dean Frank Rhodes. In spring 1973, the LSA Executive Committee formally approved the Women’s Studies Program. It was staffed with a quarter-time director and a half-time secretary.

The program continued to grow, but in 1980 its future was in jeopardy. Its first review raised serious concerns that not enough faculty taught upper-level courses. Students had campaigned to create the program. Now they had to cam-paign again"—"to save it.

“We wanted to save the major and to make sure these TAs continued to be able to teach,” recalls Laura Sanders (A.B. 1983). “We marched down State Street and into the Dean’s Office. We sat down and there were so many of us it filled up the entire hallway. People tried to step off the elevator and couldn’t. I think that very strong show of support was surpris-ing.” The program got more faculty. The major was saved.

The program reorganized, evolved, and grew. In 2007, it became the Department of Women’s Studies. Though the program eventually flourished, its early founders did not necessarily reap the rewards of its success. “There are a lot of professional casualties from the 1970s era,” says Rubin, “people whose careers were derailed or delayed or diverted as a result of the work they did to blaze trails for others.”

The activism took a toll on students, too. André Wilson (B.F.A. 1986) remembers activists who got their degrees and those who didn’t make it to graduation. “These stu-dents are not acknowledged as alumni, but without every student who fought for change, U-M would not be what it is today. The students made it happen.

“Very often, these students were intersectional in their efforts,” says Wilson. “We organized around several issues simultaneously because we understood they were inter-twined. Making these stories visible is important because they are inspiring and instructive.”

For those of us who weren’t here in 1970, it’s hard to reconstruct how limited women’s opportunities were.Women had won the right to wear Bermuda shorts in the library, and, yes, they no longer had to wear dresses to eat dinner in the dining hall. Gone were the residence hall curfews that had been imposed on women and not on men. There had been progress.

But women still couldn’t join the marching band or compete in varsity athletics. They could not make up more than 45 percent of an incoming freshman class. “There were very few women on the faculty,” recalls Associate Professor of Anthropology and Wom-en’s Studies Gayle Rubin (A.B. 1972, M.A. ’74, Ph.D. ’94), “and their numbers became infinitesimal at the tenured level.” Some fields, such as psychology, had areas where women were the focus. But there was not yet a discipline called women’s studies.

In 1970, students and faculty were planning a giant environmental teach-in, protesting the Vietnam War and the draft, marching to improve diversity, and advocating for women’s rights. 1970 was also the year a group of women filed a sex discrimination com-plaint against the University that led to government sanctions. And it was the year that marked the centennial of women at U-M.

ORGANIZE, EVOLVE, GROWIn response to the lawsuit, U-M created a Commission on Women and opened the Office of Affirmative Action in 1971. It drafted a plan to increase women’s representation on campus"—"a plan the government accepted in 1973, two years after women’s studies had been introduced at U-M.

Kathryn Kish Sklar (M.A. 1967, Ph.D. ’69) taught the first women’s studies course in the Residential College in the spring of 1971. Sklar had earned her Ph.D. in the history of American women"—" a subject tacitly understood by Sklar and her advisor as a kind of professional suicide. “I did the Ph.D. because I wanted to be a his-torian,” she says, “but since the academic history profession was not open to women, I just researched my own interests.”

In the summer of 1972, graduate student Lydia Kleiner (M.A. 1972) recruited Sklar to help create a women’s studies program. Together, they assembled a coalition of students, junior faculty, and senior faculty members, including Department of Psychol-ogy Professor Libby Douvan, Anthropology Professor Norma Diamond, and Geography Professor Ann Larimore. “Without their participation,” says Rubin, “I doubt our motley group of adjuncts and students would have gotten far.”

1970–PRESENT

PHOTO Bentley Historical Library


Yates became director of CULS, a position he held until 1973. Yates, Collins, and a fellow psychology student, Wade Boykin (M.A. 1970, Ph.D. ’72), led the effort to develop the program. They relied on their academic training and sought out people across campus who could offer practical expertise, such as note-taking techniques and strategies to improve test-taking proficiency. They also used their own experiences as a guide.

“We reflected back on our time and tried to identify what we’d needed to be successful here,” Collins says. “Many black students came from inner city schools, which did not have the same resources as suburban schools. So that was one thing. But what also became clear was that many of us felt isolated in the classroom.

“If we could cluster black students in writing classes, for example, they could talk about material that was relevant to their existence and internalize the concepts better,” Collins continues. “Today we’d call it active learning. They could reinforce each other, elaborate on the material, and relate it to their own lives.

“I remember my first assignment, to read ‘The Joys of Sport at Oxford,’” Col-lins recalls. “I could read about it, but it didn’t mean much to me.”

Study groups were the core of the CULS model. Stephens directed a peer-ad-vising program. CULS placed a premium on students teaching one another.

“We worked with departments to create special sections — ‘Power Sec-tions,’ we called them — for calculus or chemistry or whatever,” Yates explains. “If the other sections of the course were meeting for four hours a week, we’d go six.” CULS did not favor tutoring because its members believed tutoring meant playing catch-up.Throughout the negotiations, protests, and strikes, OAP had continued its

work. Beginning in September 1970, CULS ran right alongside it. The units didn’t have an official relationship, and they had different structures, but they informally worked together. Because OAP’s advisors were staff, for example, they could officially approve course changes. “If we needed our students to get into a course,” Yates explains, “we would ask OAP advisors to help out.”

CULS and OAP continued to operate as separate units until 1983, when two review committees recommended that the programs be combined. Yates and the other CULS leaders agreed, and together the two units became LSA’s Comprehensive Studies Program (CSP).

Decades later, CSP continues to offer instruction, advising, and support services to underrepresented students. To Yates, such programs continue to address the same needs. “There is no reason to think that potential differs by ethnicity, so it is our mission to get people where they should be,” he says. “We’ve always envisioned that people will use whatever they learn at the Uni-versity to do good in all kinds of areas. That’s why we have always approached the idea of excellence, not sufficiency.”

Collins, who directed CSP from 1992 to 2008, agrees. “My entire career has been devoted to this work. From this vantage point, I have developed some different ideas, but the enthusiasm and commitment to the principle are the same: wanting to be a social change agent, wanting to do something that makes a difference, wanting to examine my life and what I do with it — those remain part of my core.”

Stephens says that they were also thinking of the students who would come after them as they negotiated and protested to make campus more inclusive. “We understood we were transient,” Stephens says. “We needed to leave a strong structure behind.” n

underrepresented

students.

PHOTOS (Top) Bentley Historical Library; (bottom) Courtesy of CSP18 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017


Diversity Is Our StrengthThe College of LSA reaches toward greater inclusion.LSA welcomed the first woman, the first Asian student, and the first African American woman to the University in the 1870s, and the College continues to place the values and benefits of diversity at the center of its educational mission. But despite successes, the College can do better.

In conjunction with the University-wide Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, LSA has an ambitious plan to expand access and build a more diverse community of students, staff, and scholars.

Among dozens of LSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the College’s recent activities include:

n Dramatically expanded support for the Comprehensive Studies Program (CSP), including the launch of Bridge Scholars PLUS, which provides more than $100,000 in support for academic coaching, scholarship support, and experiential learning; the creation of an internship/mentorship program with CSP juniors and seniors; and free Kaplan test preparation services for 100 students.

n A DEI-affiliated LSA Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellowship Program that aims to recruit a total of 50 fellows with demonstrated research and teaching interests in diversity over five years and then convert those fellowships to tenure-track faculty positions.

n A new Distinguished Diversity and Social Transformation Professor-ship position aimed at recruiting senior faculty to U-M.

n $1.4 million in support for international opportunities for Pell Grant recipients through the Center for Global and Intercultural Study and $845,000 in support for student internship opportunities through the LSA Opportunity Hub.*

n Additional support and recruiting efforts targeting students who transfer from other colleges and universities, including community college students.

n Hiring a staff diversity officer to serve the entire College and con-ducting a national search for a new associate dean for DEI.

n Close collaboration with programs and centers around campus to improve the quality of inclusive undergraduate teaching in first- and second-year courses in STEM and beyond.

underrepresented

students.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LSA’S DEI EFFORTS AT myumi.ch/lsadei.

Alumnus Victor Marsh (A.B. 1970; center) is among the many alumni who have participated in CSP mentoring programs.

*LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LSA Opportunity Hub on p. 64.



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by Elizabeth WasonThe past and future of U-M’s museums, collections, and libraries.

OBJECTLESSONS

LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER MICHIGAN BECAME A STATE ON JANUARY 26, 1837, a bill called Act 20 was drafted. Passed on February 23, Act 20 made provisions for an impressive statewide geological survey that would include, among other things, “appropriate maps and diagrams,” as well as catalogs, taxonomies, and descriptions of Michigan’s “rocks, soils and minerals, and its botanical and geological produc-tions, together with specimens of the same.” As the first state geologist, Douglass Houghton led the expedition.

In addition to his governmental role, Houghton was also U-M’s first professor of geology and mineralogy — and the first professor of chemistry and pharmacy, as well, since professors often did double, triple, and quadruple duty back then. His samples made their way back to the University. With Houghton’s samples, along with a sizable collection of minerals purchased for $4,500 from the collection of an Austrian baron named Louis Lederer, the University’s early natural history collec-tion was notable, including “between four and five thousand Specimens [of minerals]; and suites of Specimens illustrative of the Geology, Zoology and Botany of Michi-gan.” All of this to serve an institution composed at that time of only 53 students and five faculty members, Houghton included.

In the following decades, this early collection was joined by other specimens and objects from the fields of natural history, ethnology, geology, medicine, and fine art in what was then called the “Museum of the University of Michigan.” By 1873, most of the museum’s collections were still housed in the recently remodeled Mason Hall, and they had grown to include “3,733 entries and 105,499 specimens,” according to Univer-sity President James Burrill Angell. “And, as is believed, the museum of only one of our institutions of learning surpasses ours in the number. The museum ranged from elements of Houghton’s geological survey to art pieces such as the sculpture Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii. (Nydia, the most popular art exhibit in the year 1873, is still on view today in the Beaux Arts Annex of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.)

Today, the University’s collections are split among at least 12 museums, five libraries and special collections, and four significant art collections, in addition to the speci-mens housed at Nichols Arboretum and Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Story by Brian Short

22 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017 PHOTOS (Timeline and above) Bentley Historical Library

Two LSA professors — Kerstin Barndt, an associate professor of Germanic languages and literatures and in museum studies, and Carla Sinopoli (M.A. 1979, Ph.D. ’86), a curator of Asian archaeology and a professor of anthropology and the director of the Museum Studies Program — are using U-M’s bicentennial as an opportunity to look back and get a capacious view of U-M’s museums, collections, and libraries. Because how long could it take to research all of them?

“We were probably a little naïve in the beginning,” Sinopoli says with a laugh.

THE HISTORY OF OBJECTSIt was during a yearlong fellowship at the Institute for the Humanities that Barndt got the idea of creating as complete a history as possible of the University’s museums, libraries, and col-lections. Sinopoli happened to be thinking about the same thing.

“I probably would not have thought of taking this entire proj-ect on without the freedom that the Institute for the Humanities fellows have when they aren’t teaching full time,” Barndt says.

“I was thinking that something had to be done for the bicenten-nial,” Sinopoli says, “but I never realized how big it would get.”The research process was laborious and included explor-

ing physical spaces, searching through archive catalogs,

1841First museum col-lections move to what’s now known as Old Mason Hall.

l837The first Michigan Geological Survey yields the first specimens for the U-M Herbarium collection. 1841

A cabinet of specimens—the humble origin of the U-M Museum of Natural History and the other research museums on campus that we know today—moves for the first time, from temporary storage in the home of a faculty member to a new space in Old Mason Hall.

The first U-M charter calls for the creation of a museum, botanical garden, and library.

The oldest specimens in the Herbarium were collected more than 200 years ago, between 1800 and 1810.


interviewing administrators, and combing through reams of photos, documents, and letters. The pair received support for the project from the Institute for the Humanities, the Bicenten-nial Committee, MCubed, the University of Michigan Office of Research, and the College of LSA.The first fruit of the collaboration will be a book—Object

Lessons and the Formation of Knowledge: The University of Michigan Museums, Libraries and Collections 1817–2017—that includes essays by more than 30 authors and is due out in the fall. Touching on everything from the Detroit Observatory to the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the book includes photos by artist Richard Barnes, who was given free rein to document and photograph

the collections. There will be an exhibit on display at the Ruth-ven Museums Building and curated by Barndt, also titled Object Lessons, in the fall term.

Barndt and Sinopoli both hope that the book and the exhibit will communicate the magnitude of material included in the University’s collections: the jars of fish, cabinets of birds, tons of statues, pallets of paintings, and boxes of bones that instructors, researchers, and students have used for two centuries to teach and test knowledge.

“I have thought a lot about the life cycle of collections and how they come to be the basis of disciplines,” says Barndt. “For example, the medical museums of pathology and anatomy were

His Excellency Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Argentine ambassador to the United States and former president of Argentina, gives the gift of a PINK FAIRY ARMADILLO to U-M upon receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree.

COST TO CONSTRUCT THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM BUILDING

$46,042$1,032,048.41 IN 2017 DOLLARS

1881Museum collections move into the newly constructed Univer-sity Museum Building.

1817–1899

PHOTO (Armadillo) Courtesy of U-M Museum of Zoology

1850An American toad collected in Michigan becomes one of the oldest specimens in LSA’s Museum of Zoology.


incredibly important in the 19th century and then lost their impor-tance with shifts in medicine and medical education. We know that these Medical School collections were still advertised with these museums until the 1950s, and then all of a sudden they stopped, and we haven’t been able to really pinpoint what happened.”

A few objects and specimens have survived, says Barndt, but the museums of pathology and anatomy have both disappeared, part of the transforming history of museums on campus and around the world over the course of the 20th century. The University also had a substantial collection of plaster casts of famous sculptures from all over the world, a collection brought to campus in the 1860s by Henry Simmons Frieze. That

collection sadly fell into neglect and was later lost completely following a shift in the field of fine art that valued original work over reproductions.

But in addition to cycles of in-vogue and out-of-fashion museum materials, there are also cycles of waning and then waxing usefulness. The almost two-centuries-old collec-tions of the Museum of Zoology and the U-M Herbarium, for example, hold increasing importance as issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and global extinctions experience new and renewed focus by researchers.The exhibit occurs at a moment of reflection and transforma-

tion for the University, as 13 million specimens from the museums

U-M Athletic Director Fielding Yost once accompanied the basketball team on a trip to Japan. Their Japanese hosts presented a full samurai suit to Yost as a gift; the anthropology museum now holds the suit in its collection.

1928Museum collections move for the third time, settling into the Ruthven Museums Building.

COST TO CONSTRUCT THE RUTHVEN MUSEUMS BUILDING

$724,952$10,055,709.20 IN 2017 DOLLARS

The anthropology museum has a more extensive collection of Filipino archaeological artifacts than any other place in the world !—!including the Philippines!

The zoology museum contains about 90,000 vials that protect small skulls and

jawbones in the museum’s dry collection.

About 5 MILLION specimens comprise the wet collection, including snakes,

fish, lizards, and eggs.

The U-M Museum of Zoology fish collection grows from 5,000 specimens in 1925 to nearly 2,100,000 specimens by the year 1944.

TODAY, THE MUSEUM HAS MORE THAN 14 MILLION SPECIMENS AMONG ITS SIX DIVISIONS.

1922 The Museum of Anthropology is founded. Today, it’s become

the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology and holds about

3 MILLIONARTIFACTS

PHOTOS (Timeline) Bentley Historical Library; (above) Martin Vloet/Michigan Photography

1900–1999


1940Pumas begin guarding the Ruthven Museums Building.

UNIVERSITY COLLECTION OF FOSSIL MATERIALS IN

THE UNITED STATES.

Specimens in the Museum of Zoology’s bird collection represent two-thirds of all bird species that exist in the world.

of zoology, paleontology, and anthropology are in the process of being moved to the new, state-of-the-art Research Museums Cen-ter (RMC) on Varsity Drive, five miles from Central Campus. (The facility has housed LSA’s herbarium since 2001.)

Material from the four RMC museums will be used in class-rooms and on display in the Museum of Natural History in LSA’s new Biological Science Building. The building is set to open in 2018, and the Museum of Natural History (complete with its famous pumas) is scheduled to open in 2019.

“I hope people reading our book and attending the exhibit get a sense of how remarkable the histories of these collections are,” says Barndt. “They are tied to the history of the state and of the

University, of course, but they are also a window that invites the public in, connecting them to faculty, students, and the global research community. Each collection is a remarkable achieve-ment on its own, but taken together, it’s astounding what has been accomplished.” n

ATTENTION ALUMS Do you have photographs of the interior of the University Museum Building, which opened in 1881 and closed in 1927? If so, please con-tact us at [email protected] to get involved with the Object Lessons project.

1926The U-M Museum of Paleontology is established, accumulating more than 3.5 million specimens by the year 2017.

1956The U-M Museum of Natural History becomes formally established as the Exhibit Museum, separating as an entity from the other four museums that are housed in the Ruthven Museums Building.

ILLUSTRATIONS (This page and opposite) Julia Lubas

1949 The U-M Radiocarbon Laboratory is the first facility of its kind following the invention of radiocarbon dating techniques at the University of Chicago. The U-M lab has helped determine the ages and chronology of archaeological artifacts worldwide.

Carbon Dating

4thlargest

1,280GALLONS OFDIESEL FUEL

45,360LINEAR FEET OFPAINTER’S TAPE

6,000PAIRS OF

RUBBER GLOVES

780,000LINEAR FEET OFSTRETCH WRAP

480TRUCKLOADS

OF SPECIMENS

MUSEUMS ON THE MOVE

Digitization projects solve the

problem of DARK DATA—information that’s collected,

processed, and stored, but unavailable to most scientists, the general

public, and policy- makers.


2002LSA’s herbarium begins digitizing specimens, with the ultimate aim of making its entire collection available in a database online.

Paleontology museum researchers unearth a 13,000-YEAR-OLD MASTODON SKULL in Michigan’s thumb. They are taking photos of it from every conceivable angle to provide a strikingly accurate digital representation in the U-M Online Repository of Fossils. Visitors to the website can examine the skull in 3-D and determine with great precision the measurements of any feature they observe on the bone.

Paleontologists will snap photos of the skull from 250 unique vantage points. They’ll stitch the images together into a complete digital model, creating a detailed reproduction of the fossil.

Unlike physical specimens, digitized specimens can be examined by more than one researcher, in different parts of the world, simultaneously.

AS OF 2017, MORE THAN 650,000 SPECIMENS HAVE BEEN SCANNED.

2016

2001LSA’s herbarium moves to the Research Museums Center on Varsity Drive in Ann Arbor, just under five miles from Central Campus.

2016The museums of anthropological archaeology, paleontology, and zoology begin their big move to the Research Museums Center.

175COUNTRIES

45U.S. STATES

HERBARIUM SPECIMENS COME FROM

VIEW THE MASTODON SKULL YOURSELF ONLINE AT umorf.ummp.lsa.umich.edu.

1,280GALLONS OFDIESEL FUEL

45,360LINEAR FEET OFPAINTER’S TAPE

6,000PAIRS OF

RUBBER GLOVES

780,000LINEAR FEET OFSTRETCH WRAP

480TRUCKLOADS

OF SPECIMENS

MUSEUMS ON THE MOVE

2000–2016

Priceless Asian art and artifacts in the anthropology museum’s Asian Division collection required a police escort when trucks carried them from the Ruthven Museums Building to the Research Museums Center.A warning from zoology collection manager Greg Schnei-

der, who takes special care to avoid the pitfalls of moving millions of specimens while keeping them all organized.

“There are so many wrong places to put

things!”

13TEAMMEMBERS

20MONTHS OF

LOGISTICS

$35MILLION

SPENT ONRELOCATION

PHOTO Courtesy of U-M Museum of Zoology

After seven months of relocating collections, the movers counted:

The museums are moving again, and their physical move parallels a paradigm shift. Current science research in prog-ress)will be on display in the new Biological Science Building for all visitors to see, for free.LSA researchers have been moving to the Research Museums Center (RMC) on Varsity Drive in Ann Arbor, just under five miles from Central Campus. The RMC now houses the museums of anthropological archaeology, paleontology, and zoology. (The herbar-ium moved there in 2001.) The U-M Museum of Natural History (UMMNH) eventually will scoot just across the campus sidewalk to a newly built Biological Science Building (BSB). Don’t worry — the pumas and mastodons will follow, and the Ruthven Museums Building isn’t going anywhere.

Throughout the last 180 years, museum exhibits have changed from encyclopedic to interactive. In the coming years, more so. Two public labs will focus on research in col-lections, genetics, and microbiology. Kira Berman, UMMNH’s assistant director for edu-cation says, “In the public labs, visitors will come in and not just see science being done, as they’ll do with the visible labs” — in which giant windows will offer a view on active research in paleontology and biodiversity genomics — “but actually do some science.”

“We can’t complain about a lack of public understanding of science if it’s conducted behind closed doors,” says former LSA Dean Terrence J. McDonald, who was involved early on in the planning of the BSB. “We have to open up the lab, invite people in, and mobilize our educational resources.”

“We also know that museums are social places,” says UMMNH Director Amy Harris. “It’s a relatively modern concept, and we want to facilitate those social interactions.” In 2007, UMMNH launched its Science Café program, in partnership with a pub in downtown Ann Arbor. There, the general public discusses current science topics with experts in an informal setting.

Science Cafés won’t move anywhere anytime soon. “Part of what makes the Science Cafés work is that they’re a mix of town and gown in a neutral place,” says Berman. It’s all in the service of blurring the boundaries that separate civilians from scientists and creating incidental collisions between those worlds.

“Programs are more important than buildings,” says LSA Professor Diarmaid O’Foighil. “But places like the BSB can help programs develop and grow in new ways.” He and other researchers will have more opportunities to collaborate in the new BSB, with shared space reserved for scientists from multiple disciplines.

“The work in this facility, along with the collections it houses, will have a continu-ous impact on ongoing research,” says LSA Dean Andrew D. Martin, “on everything from climate change to the impact of declining habitat on species.”

All this from humble beginnings on campus 180 years ago: a single cabinet of museum-quality specimens temporarily stored in the home of a faculty member.


2018LSA’s Museum of Natural History moves for the fourth time, to the newly built Biological Science Building.

COST TO CONSTRUCT THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE BUILDING

$261,000,000

“In the public labs, visi-tors will come in and not just see science being done, as they’ll do with the visible labs”!—!in which giant windows will offer a view on research in paleontology and bio-diversity!genomics—!“but actually do some science.”

Building Up

PHOTOS (Top) Courtesy of UMMNH; (bottom) Great Plains Exhibit Development/University of Michigan

2017–AND BEYOND


165,000APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF VISITORS TO LSA’S MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY EACH YEAR

In celebration of U-M’s bicentennial, LSA’s Museum of Natural History has started a collection of memories from visitors whose lives have been impacted by the museum. Share your story by visiting the Museum Memories website at myumi.ch/museummemories.

Collaborative space in the new Biological Science Building will be shared by the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; the museums of natural history, paleontology, and zoology; the herbarium; and LSA’s Biological Station offices.

#MuseumMemories

The pumas, of course, will follow the Museum of Natural History to the new Biological Science Building. Rather than gaze upon visitors who walk into the museum, the bronze pumas will face each other at the new museum entrance.

PHOTOS (Top) Scott C. Soderberg/Michigan Photography; (bottom) Courtesy of UMMNH


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This Is Where We Lead You The story of how four key LSA appoint-ments by U-M President James B. Angell put Michigan at the forefront of intellectual debate and helped lay the foundation for the modern university.WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE FAMOUS JASPER CROPSEY PAINTING OF THE University of Michigan campus in 1855, you cannot help but be struck by how isolated the place was. There are only a few buildings evident. Cows are grazing in a meadow. And we know that Ann Arbor was a small town of some 4,500 people. How, then, did the University set in that place become, within a span of 50 years, one of the most important intellectual centers in the nation? What is the origin of Michigan’s reputation?

by Francis X. Blouin Jr.


And they did, through the presence of a handful of faculty mem-bers in the College of LSA who were informed by, and contrib-uted to, discussions on how to construct and categorize knowl-edge. Central to their work were debates over the relevance of science and religion, over how we understand people as moral and social beings, and finally the broader applications of science to that understanding.

EDUCATION AND “MORAL MAN”Up until the late 19th century, especially in the United States, the province of human behavior — of what was called “moral man” — was considered inextricably bound to a moral authority rooted in the Bible. If the world was not flat and not created in seven real days, it still was generally accepted that through reli-gious thought and principles, humans and human relationships would be understood and guided.

Education, then, was the means to prepare the moral man. With few exceptions (Michigan being one), colleges and univer-sities established before the Morrill Act of 1862 were founded

on religion. This central role would only be challenged (particularly in the United States) seriously, systematically, and fun-damentally, in the late 19th century.

Charles Darwin’s proposition on the origin of species had a profound effect on intellectual life, and consequently on higher education. However, some of his side points grabbed particular attention: the ideas of randomness, that all of biol-ogy is composed of organisms, that spe-cies adapt and change, and that patterns in natural development are observable. Combined with ideas from the emerging field of social psychology, Darwin’s the-ories suggested that how we know and how we act is biological, not spiritual. It was bold and distinctly not biblical: Any-thing organic, including people, could adapt or be adapted to address broader environmental change, or might adapt in response to it.

Henry Philip Tappan came to U-M as president in 1852 to trans-form it into a rigorous intellectual center. Tappan’s sympathies were very clearly with emerging notions of science. We see that in the people he hired, such as Andrew Dickson White and Alexan-der Winchell, as well as in his work to establish a campus observa-tory. While Tappan’s arrival predated Darwin’s book, his actions were important because he boldly moved Michigan toward sci-ence and scientific investigation.

Establishing this scientific environment was one thing, but fully realizing its potential was quite another. Enter James B. Angell.

THE ANGELL INFLUENCEAs U-M’s third president, Angell embraced new ways of thinking and moved to hire several key scholars who would put Michigan at the very center of the idea of the research university.

Among the appointments was John Dewey, a junior professor of philosophy. Dewey, of course, would emerge as one of the greatest intellectuals in the history of the nation. He came to Michigan in 1884 at the invitation of George Sylvester Morris,

THE WORLD OFJAMES B. ANGELLPRESIDENT

1871–1909LITERATUREFour years after her death, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is published in 1890 to initially mixed reviews.

y 1880, the University of Michigan was one of a handful of institutions of higher education positioned to rise to the highest levels of intel-

lectual achievement. This was not on the coat-tails of any group of institutions — because none preceded it. It was a time of intellectual transformation in the nation as a whole — and Michigan, along with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and later Chicago, were posi-tioned to seize a moment.

MUSICRichard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is performed for the first time as a cycle of four operas in Bayreuth, Germany, in August 1876.

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who was chair of the Department of Philosophy. Morris wanted to bring to Michigan new perspectives derived from the emerg-ing field of psychology. Dewey, who had trained at Johns Hop-kins, was very engaged in these possibilities. He argued that instead of thinking of ourselves exclusively as a creation of a higher power, we are ourselves of our own creation — in how we understand ourselves, how we understand ourselves in relation-ship to others, and how others perceive us. The individual and the environment are connected, he argued, asking the deeper question: If we shape ourselves, can we be changed by ourselves? He offered a series of new courses in LSA that brought the study of psychology into the offerings of the philosophy department.

Dewey’s work attracted George Herbert Mead to the depart-ment. Mead, with a similar intellectual perspective, argued that the emergence of the mind depends upon interaction between the total human organism and its social environment. His focus was on achieving meaningful social reform in the Industrial Age. In 1894, both men moved to the University of Chicago, where they found the complex urban environment more suited to their work.

However, their perspective was not lost at Michigan. Refining Mead’s views further was yet another Angell appointee, social theorist Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley had been a student of Dewey at Michigan and emphasized that the study of social relations required its own discipline (i.e., sociology) with special attention to the implications for social improvement. A fourth hire, Henry Carter Adams, an economist, took these new per-spectives on society and adapted them to an understanding of the behavior of the social economy. He argued that just as social interactions could be studied and encouraged to better ends, so too could economic behavior be studied and, where necessary, regulated for the improvement of society as a whole.

Guided by Angell, Michigan was forging a community of transformational thinkers that created one of the most import-

ant intellectual environments of the early 20th century. Through Dewey and his ideas of self,

society, and education; through Mead and his ideas on the capacity of societies to achieve social transformation; through Cooley and

his ideas for the study of social processes; and through Adams and his confidence in ways

to reshape capitalist economies, Michigan

would lay the groundwork for new conceptions of education, research, and knowledge itself.

THE MODERN UNIVERSITYScholars at Michigan, along with those at a handful of other institutions, were posing fundamentally new ideas about human nature and the social order. U-M was among the first institutions to apply ideas and methodologies of science to social issues. This was, and is, social science.

Select faculty members at Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Michigan, Wisconsin, and later Cornell, and the newer universities at Berkeley, Stanford, and Chicago trans-formed the intellectual ambitions of higher education. They developed a new structure of how we approach knowledge and how we address the challenges of a complex society. These universities were among the 14 founders of the Association of American Universities that in 1900 came together to define the modern American research university, a model that is still with us today. n

Francis X. Blouin Jr. is a professor in LSA’s Department of History and in the School of Information. He served as the director of the Bentley Historical Library from 1981 to 2013. A longer treatment of the topic of this article appears in the Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 43.

MORRILL ACTSigned into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, the Morrill Act provided each state with 30,000-acre parcels of federal land based on the state’s total number of senators and con-gressmen. The land was then sold by the states and the proceeds put in an endow-ment fund that provided support for establishing colleges focused on farming, engineering, and science. Michigan State and Penn State are two of the first “land-grant universities.”

TECHNOLOGYThe first patent for a telephone is submitted in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. By 1901, there would be 1.5 million phones installed across the United States.

+SCIENCERemaining airborne for a total of 12 sec-onds and traveling just 120 feet across a windswept beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright make history with the first powered air flight on December 17, 1903.

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FORCED TO FLEE THE SOVIET UNION IN 1972, POET JOSEPH BRODSKY FOUND ALLIES IN LSA SCHOLARS AND WRITERS CARL AND ELLENDEA PROFFER. ALL THREE FOUGHT TO THWART THE CONSTRICTIONS FACING WRITERS IN THE U.S.S.R. BY SPEAKING OUT AND BY PROVIDING AN ESSENTIAL VENUE FOR SILENCED VOICES, TRANSFORMING ANN ARBOR INTO A LITERARY HAVEN AND A BEACON OF FREE SPEECH.

BY BRIAN SHORT

IN 1963, IN RESPONSE TO PUBLIC denunci-ations of work said to be both anti-Soviet and pornographic, the secretariat of the city’s Writers Union recommended that criminal charges be filed against the Leningrad poet Joseph Brodsky. Despite being self-taught, Brodsky had succeeded by the year of his denunciation in earning a modest income translating children’s poems and in performing his poems reg-ularly at readings around the city. But neither his salary nor his art was enough to escape suspicion.

Brodsky’s writing wasn’t explicitly anti-Soviet or satirical, but a crackdown was in the air. A Leningrad thug named Yakov Lerner seized the opportunity to single out an enterprising, uneducated, Jewish poet for persecution and condem-nation, and Brodsky was put on trial for parasitism in 1964.

Yevgenia Savelyeva, the judge in the case, excoriated Brodsky for his demeanor, behavior, sloth, and meanness. She tried to goad Brodsky into breaking down or blowing up, but Brodsky weathered the judge’s anger with equanimity.

In response to a suggestion by the defense that Brodsky might be mentally ill (and might thereby avoid further impris-onment), Brodsky was institutionalized in the “violent ward” of Leningrad’s Psycho-logical Hospital Number Two, located on the banks of the Pryazhka River. There, Brodsky was tortured. Yanked from his bed in the middle of the night, as Brodsky biographer Lev Loseff describes, Brodsky was “plunged into a coldwater bath, wrapped in wet sheets, and set down next to the radiator. The sheets, contracting as they dried, bit into his flesh. It’s not clear why he was subjected to [this].”

After Brodsky was released from Pryazhka, his trial resumed. He was sen-tenced to the most severe possible penalty: five years of hard labor in exile from Len-ingrad. Brodsky had been institutional-ized, declared an enemy of progress and of the state, and banished to the Arkhan-gelsk region thousands of miles away in the Arctic circle, all for the crime of being a self-taught poet. He was 23 years old.

In exile, Brodsky continued his educa-tion alone.

His home in Arkhangelsk was spare: a single-room structure, a straw mattress, a metal bucket. Using a desk made out of boards and a typewriter brought to him by friends, Brodsky wrote when he wasn’t splitting wood or hauling water or read-ing. Above the desk was a shelf filled with poetry, including some by Robert Frost and W. H. Auden. Brodsky wrote, revised,

I


SAVELYEVA: And what is your profession? BRODSKY: Poet. Poet and translator.SAVELYEVA: And who told you you were a poet? Who assigned you that rank? BRODSKY: No one. Who assigned me to the human race?SAVELYEVA: And did you study for this? BRODSKY: For what?SAVELYEVA: To become a poet? Did you try to attend a school where they train [poets]!.!.!.!where they teach!.!.!.! BRODSKY: I don’t think it comes from education.SAVELYEVA: From what then? BRODSKY: I think it’s!.!.!.!from God!.!.!.!


(PREVIOUS) Joseph Brodsky in Venice. Photo courtesy of Jan Andrews.

(LEFT) Brodsky ties his shoe on the morning of his departure from Leningrad in 1972. Photo by Lev Poliakov.

(BELOW) The famous Kresty (lit. Crosses) Prison where Joseph Brodsky was held during his trial for “parasitism.” Photo Kirill Kudrjavtsev/AFP/Getty Images.

Red Letters

LSA and the future of literature.The list of illustrious writers who were also instructors at U-M includes Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Robert Hayden, Nicholas Delbanco, Charles Baxter, and Lorna Goodison.

The list of graduates who went on to stake their claim on the literary land-scape!—!including American luminaries Theodore Roethke and Arthur Miller!—!is similarly awe inspiring.

Thanks in large part to a transformative gift of $50 million from Helen Zell in 2013, Ann Arbor now regu-larly exports literary talent around the globe. The Helen Zell Writers’ Program gives three years of support to early-career writers and connects them to an active community of alumni writers, agents, and editors, as well as mentorship and instruc-tion from faculty.

On the following pages are some entries from the CLASS OF 2017!—!recent books pub-lished by faculty and alumni of the Helen Zell Writers’ Pro-gram, all of which amount to over 4,000 pages. (If you’re planning on reading the whole pile, we suggest you go ahead and get started.)

2013–PRESENT


and improved, upending the terms of his punishment through a mode of resistance that Brodsky had practiced in court in Leningrad and would return to again and again throughout his life: the individual’s duty to resist evil through individuality, through individuation. From this tenet, Brodsky never wavered.

Meanwhile, a transcript of Brodsky’s trial had been smuggled out of the country, and the response was immediate and global. The American poet John Berryman wrote a poem about Brodsky, and the BBC broad-cast a radio play of the trial highlighting the quiet dignity Brodsky showed in the face of bureaucratic cruelty. The story challenged elements of the pro-Soviet, Western left and gave powerful validation to anti-Com-munist forces with the tale of a woebegone poet — a poet! — treated so harshly for so few words.

Returned from exile early due to com-plaints from, among others, Jean-Paul Sartre, Brodsky continued to write in Len-ingrad. He published some poems in Rus-sia and many more abroad. He resumed his on-again, off-again relationship with Marina Basmanova, and the couple had

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a son, Andrei, in 1967. But the world was watching Brodsky now, and that meant that the Soviet government was watching, too. In 1971, Brodsky was twice invited to emigrate to Israel. Then in 1972, he was warned by Soviet authorities to leave while he still could. He would never see Bas-manova or his parents ever again.

On the day he left the U.S.S.R. and flew to Vienna — June 4 — Brodsky wrote a letter to General Secretary Leonid Bre-zhnev. In it, Brodsky wrote: “From evil, anger, hate — even if justified — we none of us profit. We all face the same sentence. Death. I who write these lines will die; you who read them will, too. It’s hard enough to exist in this world — there’s no need to make it any harder.”The American scholars Carl and Ellen-

dea Proffer were with Brodksy when he received word that it would be better if he left the U.S.S.R., and the professor immediately promised the poet a position at U-M. When he arrived in Ann Arbor, Brodsky became the University of Mich-igan’s second poet-in-residence. The first had been Robert Frost, whose books had companioned Brodsky in his exile.

Carl Proffer (A.B. 1960, M.A. ’61, Ph.D. ’63) started at Michigan as a basketball player. He arrived ready to play but found himself relegated to the bench during his freshman year. Casting about for purpose, Proffer took classes in Russian language and later in Russian literature, both of which he developed powerful and prose-lytizing passions for.

As a graduate student, Proffer made the first of many trips to the U.S.S.R. during some of the most intense years of the Cold War. (Proffer’s first trip took place the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis.) He received the first Ph.D. in Slavic stud-ies ever awarded by the College of LSA,

and in 1972 Proffer became the youngest full professor in the University’s history at 34 years of age.

What Proffer and his wife, Ellendea, found on their many visits to the Soviet Union was a civilization fundamentally unlike their own and a creative class held hostage by government censors. In a 2014 speech, Ellendea Proffer Teasley described the U.S.S.R. as “an 11-time-zone prison,” a land where “a thin crust of culture [spread] over a volcano of peasant emotion.”

Members of the Soviet intelligentsia were naturally distrustful of foreign academics, and connections were slow in coming. But in the late 1960s, the Proffers received a letter of introduction to Nade-zhda Mandelstam, the widow of poet Osip and an important writer in her own right. Mandelstam opened the doors of a wide range of poets, artists, scholars, and thinkers in Moscow and around the coun-try to the Proffers. The couple quickly charted the connections between many of the U.S.S.R.’s most important published and unpublished writers. Then, they brought Brodsky to Ann Arbor.

With improving but still rusty English and no formal pedagogical training, Brodsky did what he knew — he read and discussed poems and literature. On the first day of class, he often handed out a voluminous list of suggested read-ings including, among many others, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gilgamesh Epic, the Old Testament, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Dante, Petrarch, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Alexis de Tocqueville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Italo Calvino, and 44 poets including Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and poet and translator Niko-lay Zabolotsky.

Sven Birkerts, a student who later became a literary critic, described in his


FRANCINE J. HARRIS PLAY DEADAlice James BooksPoetry

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JESMYN WARD, EDITORTHE FIRE THIS TIMEScribnerNonfiction

RANDA JARRARHIM, ME, MUHAMMAD ALISarabande BooksShort Stories

SARA SCHAFFSAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT MEAugury BooksShort Stories

AIREA D. MATTHEWSSIMULACRAYale University PressPoetry

IAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTELIVE FROM CAIROScribnerNovel

(TOP LEFT) Ellendea Proffer Teasley’s memoir Brodsky Among Us was published in April. Courtesy of Ellendea Proffer Teasley.

(ABOVE) A portrait of Brodsky’s friend and advocate Anna Akhmatova by N. I. Altman.Photo 12/Getty Images.

(BOTTOM) A letter to writer Nadezhda Mandelstam opened the doors of Russia’s literati to the Proffers. Heritage Images/Getty Images.

WE WERE IN SERVICE TO THE CULTURE. WE KNEW OUR LIFE’S WORK, AND WE WERE LUCKY TO KNOW IT.


memoir the experience of studying with Joseph Brodsky:

Poetry was not something to be ‘got-ten,’ mastered, and regurgitated in paraphrase. It was not something notched on the belt of attainments. It was, rather, a struggle waged in fear and trembling, an encounter with the very stuff of language that might put our core assumptions about existence into jeopardy. Brodsky would bring his students — us — into the arena, but he would not fight our battles for us.

In his poem “In the Lake District,” Brodsky describes his own experience with a smirk: “the function/to which I’d been appointed was to wear out/the patience of ingenuous youth.”

At the same time that Joseph Brodsky was forced to flee the U.S.S.R., the Prof-fers were starting a publishing house in Ann Arbor — in their own home, in fact — with the purpose of publishing English translations of Russian literature, scholarship on Russian literature, and books in Russian that were not available elsewhere — including volumes that had been explicitly banned in the U.S.S.R.

First at their townhouse on Watersedge Drive and later at their larger home on Heatherway, the Proffers edited, arranged, and printed Ardis books. Using an IBM Selectric Composer to print their first editions, Ardis’s volumes were pub-lished to acclaimed reviews, and copies soon became must-haves for Russian readers abroad and for those who could get access to copies that had been smug-gled into the Soviet Union.

Ardis became the Russian-language publisher for all of Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian works, all of Brodsky’s poetry, and standout contemporary Russian literature of the period such as Sasha Sokolov’s School for Fools. Ardis became a haven for writers who insisted on individ-ual expression in a country where there was tremendous pressure against speak-ing one’s mind openly.


POETRY WAS!.!.!.!A STRUGGLE WAGED IN FEAR AND TREMBLING, AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE VERY STUFF OF LANGUAGE THAT MIGHT PUT OUR CORE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT EXISTENCE INTO JEOPARDY.

Ardis also acted as a support network for Russian émigré writers in Ann Arbor, leading to strange juxtapositions in which Ardis employees might typeset Joseph Brodsky’s poetry one day and drive the poet to a driver’s exam the next. One employee chauffeured Sasha Sokolov to an emergency dental appointment and, another day, accompanied the novelist to hear his first bluegrass music at the Pretzel Bell.

Ardis employees also became messen-gers on trips of their own to the U.S.S.R. Using diplomatic pouches mailed to and picked up from the American Embassy, Ardis coordinated the delivery of books and medicine to friends in the Soviet Union. Visitors were often instructed to “accidentally” leave a camera or a tape recorder behind at someone’s house — items that could then be sold

on the black market and used to pay for travel, medical care, or both.

Due to Carl and Ellendea’s tireless efforts and a rotating cast of faculty, graduate students, Russian émigrés, and friends, the publishing house became a beacon for Russian literature in the 1970s and after, preserving many essential Russian-language books that might have otherwise vanished from history.

“We were in service to the culture,” says Proffer Teasley. “We knew our life’s work, and we were lucky to know it.”

Following the publication of a contro-versial anthology titled Metropole in 1979, the Proffers were banned from returning to the U.S.S.R. Then, in 1982, Carl Proffer learned he had cancer. The diagnosis was terminal. He died in 1984, leaving behind his wife, four children, innumerable


bereaved colleagues, and writers and readers all over the world whose most cherished books might have been ignored or lost without the work Carl and Ellen-dea did together at Ardis.

In his eulogy for Proffer, Brodsky said: “In terms of Russian literature, Carl Prof-fer might be compared to Gutenberg. That is, he invented a printing press. By publishing Russian originals and English translations that might have otherwise never seen the light of day, he saved many Russian writers and poets from obscurity and distortion, from neurosis and despair. Moreover, he changed the very climate of Russian literature. Writers whose works had been rejected or banned now felt themselves freer because they knew that for better or for worse, they could send a piece to Ardis.”

BRIT BENNETTTHE MOTHERSRiverhead BooksNovel

Brit Bennett, a California native, received her M.F.A. from the Zell Writers’ Program in 2014 and then spent a year on a Zell Fellowship. It was that final year that changed Bennett’s life, she says, allowing her to finish her debut novel, a piece of writing that she had started in high school.

The Mothers!—!which received enthusiastic reviews from the New York Times, the Guardian, NPR, and others!—!is centered on the lives of Nadia, who becomes pregnant during a relationship with the church pastor’s son, Luke, and Nadia’s friend Aubrey, who eventually marries the man. The titular mothers represent the communal voice of the elderly ladies at church who collectively narrate the opening of most chapters, noting their reflections and opinions as the plot advances.

Bennett launched her career in 2014 with a piece for Jezebel titled “I Don’t Know What to Do with Good White People.” The essay received over a million clicks within days of publication, prompting literary agent Julia Kardon to reach out, setting in motion the process that eventually led to the novel’s publication.

Far from chance and circumstance, Bennett believes her success was due to the combination of time afforded by the Zell Writers’ Program along with that program’s special community.

“The biggest advantage I had obviously was time,” Bennett says of her studies and fellowship in Ann Arbor. “Time to focus on your work and not have to worry about how you’re going to pay your rent or how you’re going to eat. To me, the time was invaluable. But I think the other thing really was the people that I met at the program. I didn’t have writer friends before the program,” she says. “In my program, I met people who became really close friends but who also have become huge professional allies.”

Now Bennett is working on a new novel about two sisters in Louisiana while on a book tour for The Mothers. Her advice to other writers is to keep working and believing in oneself, ignoring others’ opinions. She offers the example of her parents’ concerns when she wanted to be a novelist, afraid a creative field made for uncertain living. Her success changed their minds.

“They’ve been really excited to see that I stuck to my guns and kept working on my book and kept writing,” Bennett says, “and to see people respond to it the way that they have.”

Brodsky in New York. More than a decade after leaving Russia, Brodsky did briefly reunite with his son, Andrei, who visited him in the city. Photo Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images.

by Michael Luongo

BOOKS BY ALUMNI

42 LSA Magazine / SPRING 201742 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017

(ABOVE) The Leningrad apartment, now a museum, where Brodsky lived with his parents from 1955 to 1972. Photo OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images.

(BELOW) The sound of waves can be heard from Brodsky’s grave site in San Michele, Venice, Italy. Photo VPC Photo/Alamy Stock Photo.


In 1977, Brodsky moved to Greenwich Village, teaching in New York and, later, in Massachusetts. He became one of the most famous Russian émigrés in the coun-try, and his reputation as a major figure in world literature only increased as sub-sequent volumes of his writing emerged. In his own words, Brodsky described himself as “a Russian poet, an American citizen, and a Jew.”

Brodsky petitioned again and again to have his par-ents visit him in America, seeking influence from aca-demics and diplomats, to no avail. Twelve times his mother and father applied for permission from the Soviet govern-ment to visit their son, and 12 times they were denied. The language of the denials stated that such trips were not “purpose-ful.” Brodsky’s mother, Maria Moiseevna, died on March 17, 1983, and his father, Aleksandr Ivanovich, passed a little over a year later. Neither saw Brodsky again, and neither lived to see him win the Nobel.

Due to its secret nature, the shortlist for the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature is not definitively known, but rumored to be on it were Camilo José Cela, V. S. Naipaul,

Octavio Paz, Seamus Heaney, and Brodsky. All of the members of this rumored list would eventually go on to win the Nobel, but Brodsky would be first.The poet was eating lunch with the lit-

erary thriller writer John le Carré when he learned that he had won the prize. Brodsky broke off the meal and took a moment outside. Then, according to le Carré, Brodsky wrapped the Brit up in “a big Russian hug,” and told him, “Now for a year of being glib.”

Brodsky’s essays and speeches from his years in America are a vital part of his literary legacy, drawing on influences from Auden and George Orwell, mixing personal recollection and political reflec-tion. A recurring theme in Brodksy’s non-fiction is that of a personal resistance to evil, including the importance of forging one’s own path in troubled times. A tell-ing example comes in a commencement address Brodsky gave at Williams College:

[T]he surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned impostor couldn’t be happy with. Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin[.]

Brodsky lived his final years teaching, writing, traveling, giving speeches, meeting with friends. He married an Italian-Rus-sian, Maria Sozzani, in 1990, and three years later the couple had a daughter, Anna.

On January 27, 1996, Brodsky told his wife that he was going to stay up and work a bit more. His wife found him the following morning in his study where he had died of natural causes, a blank piece of paper on his desk alongside a single cigarette and a volume of the Loeb Clas-sical Library’s Greek Anthology. Brodsky

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THE SUREST DEFENSE AGAINST EVIL IS EXTREME INDIVIDUALISM, ORIGI-NALITY OF THINKING, WHIMSICALITY, EVEN—IF YOU WILL—ECCENTRICITY.

was buried in the Protestant section of a cemetery in San Michele, Venice, Italy, within earshot of the Adriatic. His grave is carved with a line from the Augustan poet Propertius: Letum non omnia finit. Death is not the end. n


EILEEN POLLACK A PERFECT LIFE EccoNovel

DOUGLAS TREVORTHE BOOK OF WONDERSSixOneSevenNovel

PETER HO DAVIESTHE FORTUNESHoughton Mifflin HarcourtNovel

KEITH TAYLORTHE BIRD-WHILEWayne State University PressPoetry

DEREK PALACIOTHE MORTIFICATIONSTim Duggan BooksNovel

BOOKS BY FACULTY

LSA ALUMS SHAPING

THE DIGITAL AGE

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by Rachel Reed

C O M P U T E R I C O N S

PALO ALTO, 1973. IN THE AFTERGLOW OF AN ERA OF electrify-ing protests, demonstrations, and social upheaval, inside an office filled with gigantic bean bag chairs and quirky young visionaries more bohemian than bookworm, computer scientist Adele Goldberg and her Xerox colleagues were quietly work-ing on a revolution of their own. With the freedom — and, in fact, the directive — to explore and innovate, Goldberg and her team were dreaming up things that today form the basis of our everyday lives — like the computer or laptop sitting on the table beside you.

member, she went out west to Stanford, where she conducted research on comput-er-aided instruction.

When Goldberg began her work, large mainframe machines were the norm. These bulky and expensive computers were found in universities, research facilities, and busi-nesses, where interested users paid by the hour for time-sharing to perform complex calculations and data management. The idea of a personal computer for the com-mon person, let alone a child, was virtually unthinkable to most people.

Silicon Valley, it turned out, was the perfect place for a young computer sci-entist like Goldberg, with its wealth of big ideas and an ever-growing number of high-tech companies. This included the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), an innovation-focused off-shoot of the Xerox company tasked with creating the tools that would be used in the office of the future.

Goldberg was hired at Xerox PARC in 1973, and along with Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, and others, got to work developing Small-talk, an object-oriented computer program-ming language. This type of language dealt with interacting objects, each object a set of actions combined with the data needed to carry out those actions, which they hoped could make it accessible to ordinary people — even intuitive enough, says Gold-berg, for children.

“From a programming point of view, our goal was a language in which you can simulate how you understand real-world phenomena,” she says.

One of the earliest accessibility prob-lems Goldberg’s team tackled was the computer’s user interface. At the time, computer screens displayed mostly in black and white using lines of text with no manipulable graphics. Smalltalk changed all that. Their new color graphics inter-face required the use of yet another lit-tle-known accessory, the computer mouse, in applications incorporating direct manipulation of displayed information.

Another concept introduced by Small-talk is almost impossible to imagine living without today. “The biggest impact of

They weren’t necessarily trying to change the world. “We were just having fun,” Gold-berg says. But they changed it anyway.

Goldberg (A.B. 1967, Sc.D.Hon. ’14) first became interested in computers as a math-ematics major at U-M. After her junior year, she spent the summer working for IBM, teaching herself how to program on large physical boards that were operated like an early telephone switchboard. From there, she got her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, with a focus on computers in education. At the suggestion of a faculty

M A K I N G S M A L LTA L K

46 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017 ILLUSTRATIONS Erin Nelson

SPRING 2017 / LSA Magazine 47PHOTO Ann E. Yow-Dyson/Getty Images

“When we were developing Smalltalk, there were no personal com-puters. The idea that you could carry one around in your back pocket was crazy talk,” says Goldberg.

PHOTOS (Timeline) Bentley Historical Library48 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017

The Wayback MachinesA tour of computers on campus.LSA grads have shaped the high-tech world we live in, including JIM BLIMM (B.S. 1970, M.S.E. ’72), who trans-formed the way that objects and light interact in 3-D vir-tual environments, and JOHN SEELY BROWN (M.S. 1964, PH.D. ’72, SC.D.HON. ’05), a pioneer of digital culture and online organization. But the transformations of the digi-tal era have changed life on campus, also, from student time-sharing operations back when computers were the size of a living room to giving students the opportunity to register for classes on the screen of their smartphone.

From Silicon Valley to State Street, LSA Victors are com-mitted to building our digital infrastructure and expand-ing our online possibilities!—!laying the foundation of the 21st-century campus and the future of higher education.

1953The Michigan Digital Automatic Computer (MIDAC), the first digital computer developed at U-M, becomes operational.

1956 Arthur Burks, pro-fessor of philosophy, founds the Logic of Computers research group.

1962 The Inter-Univer-sity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is founded, connecting 21 universities and providing data analy-sis and research sup-port for projects in the social sciences.

1975Computer Regis-tration Involving Student Participation (CRISP), a comput-erized class registra-tion system, officially launches.

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Smalltalk was an accessible editing and testing environment for program-ming,” says Goldberg. “Ours was the first multiple-window system.” In other words, it was the first system where you could copy text from one window and paste it into another, or work on two different tasks at a time without losing what you were doing in either.

Smalltalk also offered users rapid prototyping, a process that allowed programmers to test parts of their code (actually object definitions) working incrementally, rather than completing the entire product and then testing, when problems could be more costly to find and correct.

Remarkably, the Xerox team also envisioned Smalltalk being used on a portable personal computer they called the Dynabook — a device whose prototype looked uncannily like a modern iPad, including multimedia applications.

“The goal was to have a programmable small computer you could carry around with you,” says Goldberg. “The primary thing we were interested in was: How can people who are not professionals write their own programs? And why would they want to?”

Smalltalk caused a sensation among programmers. In 1981, the microcomputing magazine Byte dedicated an entire issue to the language and its new ways of concep-tualizing software. Many of the ideas introduced by Smalltalk were integrated into later systems, such as Java and Apple’s Objective-C.

In 1988, after testing Smalltalk with both children and adults, Goldberg decided to spin off her own venture, ParcPlace Systems, which focused on marketing Small-talk-80 to the outside world. Under Goldberg’s leadership, Smalltalk was introduced to a multitude of businesses worldwide, from telecommunications companies to financial institutions, to help manage databases, analytic systems, and more.

PARC, in Palo Alto, California, served as the creative foil to Xerox’s more buttoned-up corporate head-quarters on the East Coast.

PHOTOS (Opposite and right) PARC, a Xerox company

1986The so-called “MacTruck” sale event is held on February 7 and 8, marking the largest delivery ever made by Apple to a single location.

2004 U-M announces a partnership with Google to digitize 7,000,000 volumes from University libraries and collections.


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THE DYNABOOKORIGINALLY CONCEIVED AS “A PERSONAL COMPUTER FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES,” THE DYNABOOK WAS IMAGINED AS A 9"x12" SCREEN WITH A CONNECTED KEYBOARD. THE PROPOS-AL FOR THE DYNABOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1972 BY XEROX PARC RESEARCHER AND TURING AWARD WINNER ALAN KAY, AND THE CONCEPT ART LOOKS AWFULLY FAMILIAR.

“This new medium will not ‘save the world’ from disaster. Just as with the book, [the computer] brings a new set of horizons and a new set of problems. The book did, however, allow centuries of human knowledge to be encapsulated and transmitted to every-body; perhaps an active medium can also convey some of the excitement of thought and creation[.]”

FROM “A PERSONAL COMPUTER FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES” BY ALAN C. KAY, 1972

“Once, at a conference, Steve Jobs spoke and suggested no one would want to use object-oriented programming to build new code if you already had some-thing that worked,” says Goldberg. “The next speaker was one of our clients — a car manufacturer — who said they were rewriting their (functioning) payroll sys-tem because, in negotiations with their union, they wanted to say yes more often to union demands but couldn’t because of the inflexibility of their current pay-roll software. Instead, they were working with us to make the consequences of change more predictable.”

While at ParcPlace, Goldberg noticed that one of the barriers facing software engineers was in their ability to manage large development projects, especially with team members in remote sites. Never one to shy away from an inter-

esting problem, Goldberg founded a new company in 1997, Neometron — “new measures” in Latin — to address it.

“There weren’t network-based project management systems at that time,” says Goldberg. “So we tried to combine that goal with figuring out how people could work remotely from home, including communicating with one another.”

Neometron was based on ideas from Goldberg’s Xerox team, which, in the early ’80s, set up a satellite office in Portland, Oregon, to test their ideas about collaborative technology. Their work was one of the earliest collaborative systems, a development today’s growing legion of telecommuters is inti-mately familiar with.Throughout the entirety of her career, Goldberg was a

trailblazer, not only recognized as one of the top computer scientists in the field, but also as one of its few women. In addition to her many ventures, she served as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 1984 to 1986, and received ACM’s Software Systems Award with Kay and Ingalls in 1987. In 1990, PC Magazine honored her with a lifetime achievement award.

Today, Goldberg is retired, but she is still active in the sci-entific community, and she maintains connections with other scientists around the globe through her membership on the science advisory board at the Heidelberg Institute for Theo-retical Studies and the visiting committee for the University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division.

“I never really had a nine-to-five job,” she says. “But when you are retired, now it’s on you to ask what would give you joy in how you spend each day. More often than not, you want to be engaged with interesting people and still contribute to the world.” n

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Goldberg’s team pointedly chose the name “Smalltalk”—a stark contrast to the more overwrought monikers fa-vored by other systems—in order to em-phasize their language’s simplicity and accessibility.

THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRETY OF HER CAREER, GOLDBERG WAS A TRAILBLAZER, NOT ONLY RECOGNIZED AS ONE OF THE TOP COMPUTER SCIENTISTS IN THE FIELD, BUT ALSO AS ONE OF ITS FEW WOMEN.

PHOTO PARC, a Xerox company

IN EARLY 1999, SANJAY VARMA (A.B. 1989) HAD ALREADY BUILT a career most would envy. He had attended Columbia Business School, helped launch what is now the largest office supply com-pany in Hungary, worked for a global consulting firm, and was crisscrossing the world for his father’s business, which was looking to expand its operations in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

So it was mostly curiosity (and a little prescience) that convinced Varma to cough up the money to attend a three-day conference on what he saw as a bur-geoning technology: the internet. Varma attended a number of different talks, hop-ing to learn about the internet’s potential for business and international trade. As luck would have it, one of the presenta-tions was by Jack Ma, a Chinese business-man who laid out his vision for a new web upstart. Intrigued, Varma stayed to ask some questions, and the two men began talking. A few meetings later, thanks to Varma’s expertise in international trade and his vision on how to harness the inter-net’s potential to empower small enter-prises, he was asked to join the team of Ma’s venture, Alibaba.

In the beginning, Ma’s goal for Alibaba was to serve as an online portal to connect individual manufacturers with buyers around the world.

“The way business used to work is that retailers would have to work with whole-salers, who would then go to trading com-panies, who would then connect them to manufacturers,” explains Varma.

Varma realized quickly that the internet would redefine how business would be done, and Alibaba could be the center of driving this change.

“Some of the questions we asked were: How do we empower small companies so they can trade with other equivalent-sized companies? How do we create a visible mar-ketplace for all small enterprises? Can Ali-baba eventually take on Walmart? Is there a world where an individual outside China can buy a product directly from a small manufacturer in China or elsewhere with-out going through so many middlemen?”

Varma’s experience in global trade meant that he brought intimate knowl-edge about how retailers had traditionally connected with the manufacturers of their goods and other supply-chain chal-lenges — along with big plans to blow that old model to pieces. Varma helped to develop Alibaba as a global marketplace in which buyers and sellers of all sizes had full visibility and tools to trade with one



“It’s a market-place where the fittest survive,” LSA alum San-jay Varma says of his time at e-commerce giant Alibaba.

“If you can’t add value, then you disappear.”

PHOTO Natalie Condon

another without the need for middle-men who made money but added little value to the transaction.

“It’s a marketplace where the fittest survive. If you can’t add value, then you disappear,” says Varma. Their work paid off: Alibaba is now the largest marketplace in the world, with a trans-action volume seven times bigger than Amazon.

In 2002, Varma, after a string of successes at Alibaba and sensing that the tech scene was slowing a bit, decided to try his hand at something a little different.

Varma turned his attention to another global issue: climate change. He stumbled upon green cooling, at the time a little-known technology that cools with a much lower power consumption than traditional air conditioning. He got to work with his engineers, perfecting the technology. His firm outsourced manufacturing and also licensed the Honeywell brand, which produces air coolers and conditioners, on a global and exclusive basis. His business, JMATEK, is now one of the top green cooling compa-nies in the world with a presence in over 70 countries.

Varma continues to run his thriv-ing business, but he has never stopped think-ing about that

chance encounter with Ma 18 years ago. Ever since that serendipitous meeting, Varma has been mulling over problems that are more on the human level, that people are facing job chal-lenges on a global scale.

“I was in Dallas for a few days in search of product development engi-neers,” Varma says. “It was tough find-ing them. As I was sitting in the lounge, I wondered if there was an engineer at the airport, and if so, how would I know? How would these people advertise? How would we be matched? Reflecting back on my years of building

JMATEK, I realized that I had a very tough time finding the qualified individuals that helped me build my business just as those individuals had a tough time finding me. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be matched with someone who also graduated from Michi-gan? It would be nice to have a way to connect with them. But how?”

Varma began to envision a world where people could match with one another for any reason, regardless of where they were located: where an artist in Manhattan could find a willing patron in Brooklyn, or a burgeoning chef in Mumbai could find an aspiring restaurateur in London. To make his idea a reality, he put together a team and began to design technology that could do all these things and more. He built an app and called it Kalido.

“We spent a year building a beta, trying to crack this problem of matching people for the right reasons. We wanted to create an opportunity network that empowers the individual,” says Varma.

And the testers loved it. They were recent graduates who wanted to monetize mul-tiple skills — people who were entrepreneurs, recent graduates, and employers. At its core, Kalido is a non-transaction and trust-based platonic dating app and networking platform rolled into one, minus the social pressure. Using the app, people can share their talent and automatically match with someone who is looking for their skills, a potential business partner, or even just a friend with the same obscure hobby. Today, after raising a little more than $5 million from angel investors, Varma is beginning to launch the app into new markets, including to students and alumni at U-M.

“The reason we wanted to launch at a university is because the students are our future,” he says. “A recent Gallup poll says that over 90 percent of the workforce is not completely satisfied at work, and we hope that Kalido will help change this. We would love a world where people are truly independent, working with like-minded people, mentors, and alumni, enjoying every hour of their day.”The aim, says Varma, is to give individuals the power to do what they really want for

a living. “I see a world where millions of people use Kalido to look for new opportunities,” he

says. “That would be a day when people don’t worry about their economic security and can do things they love to do and get paid for it.”

Once Kalido reaches critical mass, Varma says, he might like to work on an issue that affects children, like improving public education. He’d like to see schooling that is more personalized and tailored to the diverse needs of individual students, in order to foster their unique talents.

“Sometimes I see kids and I wonder what the world will be like for them in 20 years,” he says. “It would be amazing to see a world in which people are smiling and enjoying their lives and working hard at something they enjoy doing. The more people who think this way and care about today and tomorrow, the more likely we are to get there.” n

K A L I D OS C O P E


VARMA BEGAN TO ENVISION A WORLD WHERE PEOPLE COULD MATCH WITH ONE ANOTHER FOR ANY REASON, REGARDLESS OF WHERE THEY WERE LOCATED.

The Bicentennial Quiz

TAKE THE FULL QUIZ ONLINE AT: myumi.ch/UMich200lsaquiz.

How many years does it take to make a Middle English dictionary? What is an organic free radical and how many were at the first teach-in?

Here is a smattering of questions from our 20-question bicentennial quiz. Test your gray matter here and zip online to try the rest at

myumi.ch/UMich200lsaquiz .

54 LSA Magazine / SPRING 2017 PHOTO Liz DeCamp

The tradition of carving names into tabletops began in a local Ann Arbor saloon well frequented by U-M students. This table, now located in the Michigan Union, dates back to 1909.

SPRING 2017 / LSA Magazine 55ANSWERS: 1(B), 6(A), 9(A), 12(A), 16(A), 18(B), 20(B)

STEADFAST GROUNDBREAKING ADVENTUROUS

ENTERPRISING INTREPID EXPLORING

STRIVING PERSISTENT TRAILBLAZING

LSAFund

EVERY GIFT MAKES A DIFFERENCE.

lsa.umich.edu/alumni/giveonline734.615.6376

You made it so that Brittany Lee — who was working two jobs — could complete her senior year. You helped Pablo Mercado afford to do an internship at a Detroit water treatment nonprofit. Jasmine Leon could attend U-M despite a mountain of family medical bills and Rachael Ochoa was able to take an internship opportunity at Blue Cross Blue Shield. And all of it was made possible through your support.

You gave back so that these and other students could explore new careers and follow their dreams. Give a gift today to support the next generation of LSA Victors and help build the future.


Regents of the University of MichiganMichael J. Behm, Grand BlancMark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor

Shauna Ryder Diggs, Grosse PointeDenise Ilitch, Bingham Farms

Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann ArborAndrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park

Ron Weiser, Ann ArborKatherine E. White, Ann Arbor

Mark S. Schlissel, ex officio

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/ affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondis-crimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal oppor-tunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activ-ities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Insti-tutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734.763.0235, TTY 734.647.1388, [email protected]. For other University of Michigan information call 734.764.1817.

LSA MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED TWICE EACH YEAR BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN COLLEGE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS

Andrew D. MartinProfessor of Political Science and Statistics, and Dean, College of LSA

Tom Baird Assistant Dean for Advancement

John Lofy Director, Marketing and Communications

Patricia ClaydonChief Marketing Officer, Creative Director

Matt NelsonCommunications Manager

Brian ShortEditor

Susan Hutton, Rachel Reed, Elizabeth Wason Editorial Staff

Alicia Vazquez, Erin Nelson, Julia LubasDesigners

Copyright © 2017 Regents of the University of Michigan ARTICLES MAY BE REPRINTED BY OBTAINING PERMISSION FROM:

Editor, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, Suite 5000, 500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382

734.615.6333 [email protected]

Explore200 yearsof stories

on LSA’s bicentennial timeline.Learn more at myumi.ch/lsatimeline.


Meet the DeansHere’s a brief look at those who have sat behind one of the most important

desks on campus during the College’s first 200 years. by Matt Nelson

HENRY S. FRIEZEDean 1875–1889In addition to being a beloved teacher, Frieze was a recog-nized musician and composer to whom credit is largely given for the creation of the Choral Union and the University Musical Society.

MARTIN L. D’OOGEDean 1890–1897An ordained minister, D’Ooge would, the University Senate observed, “doubtless have become a preacher of note had not his scholarly ambitions and tastes detained him in the quieter walks of Academic life.”

RICHARD HUDSONDean 1897–1907Born in England, Hudson once worked in a Hamilton, Ontario, telegraph office to help sup-port his family while pursuing his studies in his free time.

JOHN O. REEDDean 1907–1914Reed’s chief scholarly contri-butions were to the fields of optics and acoustics, but he was also a lover of literature and poetry who championed the ancient classics.

JOHN R. EFFINGERDean 1915–1933According to one faculty res-olution, LSA’s longest-serving dean had “a rugged honesty, an almost disconcerting can-dor, and a blunt impatience with sham and pretense of any sort.”

EDWARD H. KRAUSDean 1933–1945Kraus recruited the renowned chemist Kasimir Fajans, who was of Jewish descent, to the College from Germany during the initial rise of the Nazi Party.

HAYWARD KENISTONDean 1945–1951Keniston taught Spanish, French, and Italian, and he took leave during the 1943–44 school year to serve as attaché in charge of cultural relations at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires.

CHARLES E. ODEGAARDDean 1952–1958Accepting his position at age 41, Odegaard was the youngest dean ever selected to head the College. He served in the Navy in World War II, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander.

ROGER W. HEYNSDean 1958–1962Heyns was given the Class of 1919 Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1950, and his course Psychol-ogy of Adjustment was one of the most popular on campus.

WILLIAM HABERDean 1963–1968A native of Romania, Haber was extremely involved with public policy and served as a member of the advisory council that drafted the nation’s first Social Security law, in 1939.

WILLIAM L. HAYSDean 1968–1970Regarded as both an excellent researcher and teacher, Hays received the Henry Russel Award in 1960, the University’s highest honor for faculty at the early to middle stage of their career.

FRANK H. T. RHODESDean 1971–1974Rhodes received nearly every notable award and medal in his field and also played a signifi-cant role in the development of national science policy under several U.S. presidents. He held 35 honorary degrees.

BILLY E. FRYEDean 1976–1980A tall, lanky presence on campus known for sporting bow ties and a fresh flower in his lapel, Frye was named U-M’s vice president for academic affairs in 1980 and provost in 1983.

PETER STEINERDean 1981–1989A renowned figure in both the economics department and the law school, Steiner con-ducted research that generally centered around the connec-tions between economic anal-ysis and public policy.

EDIE N. GOLDENBERGDean 1989–1998Goldenberg played a key role in the federal govern-ment’s civil service reform of the 1980s. While dean, she helped to launch the Michigan in Washington Program.

SHIRLEY NEUMANDean 1999–2002Neuman arrived at LSA from the University of British Columbia. A professor of English and women’s studies, she was committed to interdisciplinary research.

TERRENCE J. MCDONALDDean 2002–2013An award-winning scholar and a former Guggenheim Fellow, McDonald is also a celebrated teacher. He currently serves as director of the Bentley Historical Museum.

ANDREW D. MARTINDean 2014–presentWith expertise in the study of judicial decision-making, Dean Martin is the co-creator of the Martin-Quinn scores, which measure the ideology of Supreme Court justices.

ILLUSTRATIONS Charlie Layton


Worst-Case ScenarioNow you can find out about the most serious problems you might have

encountered during the tenure of the first dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts by cutting out and constructing your own

Henry S. Frieze fortune teller. (Spoiler! It’s consumption.)

RULESFold the fortune teller according to the illustration. Hold it (or go old school and have a friend do it) and pick either “maize” or “blue.” Spell out the color, alternately opening the teller once for each letter. After spelling out the color, choose one of the eight revealed numbers. Alternately open the teller while counting out that number. Now pick a number, and find your fate.

PHOTO Liz DeCamp ILLUSTRATION Charlie Layton


[1] Cut out game. Lay paper

images side down. Crease and then unfold as shown.

[2] Fold all four corners

into center. Your paper should look like this.

[3] Flip over.

Fold all four corners into center.

[4] Fold square in half horizontally. Open,

and then fold square in half vertically.

[5] Slip thumbs and index fingers into pockets. Pop out into shape

shown above.

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OpportunityKnocks

by Dean Andrew D. Martin

As we celebrate U-M’s first 200 years, Dean Andrew D. Martin shares how the College of LSA is working to shape the future.OPPORTUNITY IS A WORD THAT MEANS A GREAT DEAL TO US AT LSA. The opportunity to learn alongside some of the most accomplished faculty in the world. The opportunity to define success on your own terms. The opportunity to access a world-class education no matter what you look like or where you come from.



BROADCASTThe amount of American television reaches a new peak with 455 scripted original pro-grams airing during 2016#—#the most ever produced in a single year.

THE WORLD OFANDREW D. MARTINDEAN

2014–presentTECHNOLOGYThe number of people using the inter-net more than quadruples from 738 million in 2000 to 3.2 billion in 2015 according to the International Telecommunication Union.

The LSA Opportunity Hub will be the starting point where students connect what they are learning in their liberal arts classes with their hopes and aspirations.

Inside, students will get access to more than 1,800 domestic and international intern-ships, find funding so that any student can afford to have an internship experience, con-nect with alumni mentors and employers, and receive coaching to prepare for life and career possibilities.

We are investing in opportunity because we believe that the liberal arts and sciences are the best way to become richly educated, and because we believe that understanding the complexity of the world allows students to find their place in it.

We hope you will get involved. There are opportunities for alumni to mentor current students, to create internships, and to support some of the most talented, ambitious, and far-seeing students in the world.

Hub offices are already open on the first floor of the LSA Building, and our new space will open in 2019. When it’s completed, the LSA Opportunity Hub will be the place for alumni to connect with students and for students to connect with their future. Learn more about this new front door to the College online and in the fall issue of LSA Magazine.

I hope to see you there.

s we look back on the many accom-plishments of the College’s past, it seems natural to share our vision for our collective future. To address

the challenges of the 21st century, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts is making a major investment in opportunity. To serve our students, we will be expanding the first floors of the LSA Building to house a first-of-its-kind institution to empower students.

Andrew D. Martin Professor of Political Science and Statistics, and Dean, College of LSA

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Keep up with Dean Martin on Twitter @ProfADM.


LITERATUREIn a decision that stuns many, Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Dylan skips the acceptance ceremony.

WORLD AFFAIRSPresident Barack Obama orders the opening of an embassy in Havana, Cuba, in December 2014, restoring full diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time in over 50 years.

The U-M Board of Regents approved the architectural plans for the new LSA Opportunity Hub in March. The plans, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and SmithgroupJJR, include a two-story glass entrance, a dedicated classroom, an enclosed multipurpose room, collaborative meeting spaces, and plenty of cozy nooks for studying.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LSA OPPORTUNITY HUB ONLINE AT myumi.ch/aboutthehub.

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University of MichiganCollege of Literature, Science, and the Arts500 South State Street, Suite 5000Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382

NONPROFIT U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDANN ARBOR, MIPERMIT NO. 144

Parasite or Poet? P. 34

ROUSTABOUTS AND DOG FENNEL BOILED IN LARD. P. 60

Every museum that ever was. P. 20

The learning machine that changed the world. P. 3

DID YOU MISS IT?Make sure you check out these stories!

Keep an eye out for an email or postcard from the Alumni Association announcing the launch of the 2017 Alumni Census. Please review the information U-M has on file for you and update it with your current job, contact information, and any additional educational news. Help us strengthen our alumni family and make U-M an even better networking resource. Count yourself in as a proud U-M alum.

Learn more at umalumni.com/census

The Alumni Census Needs YOU

Documents

Spring 2017 CREATE page 4 - College of LSA...1898 The existence of organic free radicals is discovered by Chemistry Professor Moses Gomberg. 1954 Professor Donald Glaser invents his